Bartle-ized Guild Wars 2 Races

A commenter on an another post implied a revisitation to the four Bartle splats for a [MMO] gamer. I thought about it, but it is hard to revisit a subject that has been hammered, beaten, and possibly mishappen through the MMO blogosphere and forums. Instead, let’s also revisit the four non-human races in Guild Wars 2 in view of the Bartle splats. Much more fun that way!

The Explorers – The unique sylvari are Tyria’s newest race with the least history and culture, but whatever power created them saw fit to give them an incredible boost with the Dream of Dreams. The Dream of Dreams is a racial collective conscious of sorts. The more that the living sylvari learn the greater the Dream of Dreams becomes, and then newly born sylvari emerge into the world with more knowledge and sensation than its forebearers. Like a hiveborn species, each sylvari is driven to experience new things and leave no stone unturned. They will happily entertain the drunken norn by going to “bash that beehive good,” and knowledge of the bee stings will transfer to the Dream of Dreams. However, the experience of the sylvari being stung while hearing the guffaws of the highly amused norn will not. It’s a strange thing that not even the sylvari fully understand, and it will require further exploration.

The Killers – The charr are driven by a simple evolutionary theory – “survival of the fittest” – in all things. The race, although divided, has been tempered by so many blows. Yet where the humans crumpled back to Divinity’s Reach crying to their lost gods for mercy, the charr race grew stronger and fought back for their rightful lands. Now, each day is a struggle to survive in the charrlands. There are interloper ghosts, dragonbranded horrors, marauding ogres, and even other charr ready to drag down a charr showing any weakness. A charr sees the sun setting on a dead body as a simple grace because the worthless creature was not worthy of watching the next sunrise. Even when sipping liquour at the Whiskey Bar, charr prefer to watch comrades fight monsters in a pit below rather than listen to some supposably epic tale or ballad. To be a charr be fierce, be strong, and prepare to kill everybody you meet.

The Achievers – A norn life without renown is a life wasted. Unlike charr, norn don’t have to be the best. They just have to have done better feats. It’s one silly thing to say that you beat some other strong norn at armwrestling; it’s wholly another to say you broke off a dragon tooth, while swinging from the dragon’s eyelash, while you were holding a keg of ancient dwarven rum (120 proof), while wearing some stolen panties on your head, and then beat every other norn at armwrestling at the keg party afterwards. (True norn tale.) The charr battle reports dictating victories are thrown away for a reason: they are boring. The measure of a norn is the length of his legend. Yes, some legends are longer than others, and each norn will gladly emphasize his own legend. But, when another norn praises an individual norn’s legend, then truly that norn will live forever.

The Socializers – The dumber races think that asura are achievers for technology, or explorers for knowledge of the Eternal Alchemy, or killers because asura are a more highly advanced race. Well, they are correct. But, it’s so much better to schmooze those idiots into doing all the work for the asura. A civilized race is one built on relationships, affiliations, and debts. Who cares if some norn found time to fight a golem using only his head, when that norn is in your pocket. Without the asuran technologies, social contracts, and waypoint system the other races would simply be too stupid to know how to communicate with one another. Asura are the catalyst of connection. Thankfully asura are intelligent enough to understand that this power of connection is the greatest asset. Because at the end of the day it’s not what you do, it’s who you know.

Races based on Bartle: what an interesting observation! While your description of asura is appropriate as a description of the race, it feels like a stretch as it relates to the Bartle “Socializer.” Otherwise, you’re spot on.

Heh, the ‘Out of 100’ post is pretty close to my thoughts. The internets is a shining example of ‘nothing new under the sun’. I might add a sub-type that doesn’t get there’s a scale or possibly a Venn diagram that has ‘virtual world’ in one area, and ‘game’ in another…

GW2 races as a Planet of Hats ? Disappointing, but to be expected I suppose. Only so much creativity to go around…

Intersting. I hadn’t thought to look at the races as Bartle gamer types, but they do fit pretty well. I know for me, at least, my interest in the races matches up perfectly with my gamer type when you put it that way.